


Hackett Out

by Melpomene21



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Drabble, F/M, Post-Reaper War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 12:07:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14164509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melpomene21/pseuds/Melpomene21
Summary: Post-war Shepard/Hackett.  They have always been there for one another and as the end of the war nears, they begin to entertain thoughts of being together.  And then the war ends and they are together.  And then life happens as it so often does...





	Hackett Out

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this as a potential story outline but it's been sitting around for a long time and I don't think I'll ever finish it. So, this isn't an entirely fleshed out story, but more of an outline with a few drabbles. Hope you're able to follow it and maybe like it.

Earth is attacked and he sends her to Mars. She tells Garrus that the war is too important for them to rekindle what they had started and resolves herself to stand alone and face the devastation that is the Reaper invasion of the galaxy. After so many years of her warnings being unheeded, she can't even feel the sweet satisfaction of being proven right. Events wear down on her more than they ever have in the past and she is visibly, bone-tired and weary. She doesn't realize just how bad it is until Joker tells her that Hackett asked him to keep an eye on her.

She subsequently goes to the Citadel and inelegantly passes out on Aria’s couch. 

James calls Joker.

Joker calls Hackett. 

-*-*-*-*-

She wakes up in her apartment to the smell of someone cooking in the kitchen. Having no idea how she got home isn't as surprising as she knows it should be but she doesn't give it a second thought before she resolutely stumbles toward the aromatic pull that is emanating from downstairs.

He is in his full dress uniform and she, expecting James, or EDI or Garrus or any other member of her crew, feels suddenly naked as she had wandered out of her room in her tank top and boxer briefs. He looks at her unabashedly and she blushes. They eat without speaking and he tells her that she should get cleaned up because they need to talk.

When she returns, showered and dressed in her casual military clothes she finds him with his jacket off and the few buttons on his uniform undone. He begins to confess to her that he has never given much thought to his personal life. That he has dedicated himself to his career and to the service of the Alliance. That he had never regretted his decision until one phone call swept everything away, leaving his life empty and him questioning his every choice. When she died, the part of him that denied ever wanting anything else died along with her and, much like with what had happened with her, something, someone else had woken up in its place. He has not wanted anything since that day but to be with her. He told himself to wait until after this war was over, but he finds that he cannot. He does not care about the ramifications, only cares to know if she feels the same way.

There's a long silence that follows his speech. One filled with her pushing the food around in her plate and feeling as if she has suddenly been told that north has now inexplicably become south.

He walks around the counter to stand next to her - invading her space. In the corner of her eye she can see his hand resting against the counter. She sees the lines of age and the scars of battle.

“You once tried to kiss me," the voice that belongs to that hand says, "a long time ago. Am I a fool to think that that part of you still lives somewhere inside of you?”

She is stunned by his confession and unsure of how to react. “I slept with Garrus.” She doesn’t know why she says what she says, feeling somehow that she belonged to him since that first kiss, if not sooner, and that everything she has done since that day should be answered for. 

“I know.”

She looks up at him and they stand that way, him looming over her and them watching each other until his omnitool goes off. There's a few clicks and beeps and a resigned huff of hot air that moves a few of the downy hairs against her cheek. The hand curls into a fist, she watches it. It's not a fist of anger or aggression. The fist knocks its knuckles against the counter-top twice before he tells her to enjoy her breakfast and turns to leave her. She lets him walk out, the tension coils inside her stomach muscles with every step she hears of him walking away from her. “Wait,” she whispers, as she hears the door slide closed. There's only a moment of indecision before she chases after him, finding him in the hallway, hand hovering over the controls. “Wait!”

He turns to watch her stride toward him, her pace not quite a run but almost. She says nothing when she reaches him, they stare at each other for a long moment. His omnitool beeps again and he answers it, telling the caller that he is on his way. When he is done she takes her hand and grabs his undershirt, pulling him in for a kiss. 

The kiss is freeing, releasing emotions long withheld and overwhelming and when he pulls away she is smiling, happy tears puddle in the corner of her eyes and it's been so long she can't help but take notice of the novelty of it all. There's a feeling swelling inside of her chest that she knows deep down she has no right to entertain. 

He rests his hand against her cheek and swipes his thumb against her skin as he whispers, “Jane.”

They stare at each other for a long moment, like two fools in an old movie. His omnitool beeps again. “Go,” she says, using the same hand that had pulled him to her to push him away.

“I’ll be back,” he promises.

She smiles up to him, feeling that fool emotion in the back of her throat. She swallows. “You better.”

-*-*-*-*-

It is late when he returns. He finds her in her office. “I’ve got to leave in the morning,” he tells her in way of greeting.

She looks up to him. Forearms resting on her desk. “So do I.”

They both know that duty will always come first between them. It's part of what makes them think that they just might work.

She stands. He takes her hand. They walk up the stairs together. It feels unreal, like a dream. They start off like teenagers, all wet, sloppy kisses and frantic groping. But slowly, easily, they fall into a patient parade of caresses and purposeful kisses. His mouth and tongue on her, her mouth and tongue on him. Every inch of each other laid bare until their sighs and moans are replaced by trembling muscles and then there is nothing left. They are done and it's as if they have been this way forever - as if they hadn't wasted one single moment.

She sidles up next to him, enjoying the slickness of their sweaty skin sliding against each other. She walks her fingers along the taut muscles of his chest, playing with the downy white hairs that she finds there for a brief moment before she makes a fist and rests her chin on it, gazing into his eyes. “What was Kenson to you?”

“An old friend,” he states, without even the slightest hesitation. He takes a finger and pushes her hair behind her ear. “At one time, a long time ago, she was something more.”

“I’m sorry." Her eyes drop down to stare at his chest. She's killed so many, no matter the circumstance. It isn't fair. "This war…”

He took his finger and pulled at her chin. When she meets his eyes, he says, “I don’t want to talk about this war or what it’s taken away from us.”

“Everything you said,” she stops. “I was a little impetuous and infatuated when I kissed you back then. But my feelings haven't changed.”

His blue eyes flicker with amusement. _“Infatuated?”_

She narrows her eyes at him, raising her head and pulling away from him a little. “You’re not getting any more than that.”

He chuckles. “That’s more than enough.”

She pulls herself up to kiss him, dragging her naked body against his as she does so. They make love again, this time slower and more thoroughly.

-*-*-*-*-

They share a few messages but are otherwise separated for the rest of the war. He challenges her when she dives down for Leviathan. The next time they see each other is right before the push toward the beam. He clears the room to speak to her.

She stands in front of him, defiant. They don't kiss. They don't profess their undying love. He doesn't shed his 'admiral' persona, doesn't become the man that quivers beneath her in their bed. He only says, “I want you to know," and he gives her a smile, only the slightest crack in the armor, "that I expect to see you on the other side of this.”

-*-*-*-*-

She awakens in the hospital. He is rebuilding the universe while she is rebuilding herself. She had awoken on the table unable to walk or hold a gun. No one knows how to work with her implants and they don’t seem to be functioning. She is refitted with new implants and rebuilt for the second time in her life. She will never be a soldier again and she doesn’t know if she wants to be the human representative on the Council. They are two people that don’t know how to function if they are not giving themselves for the good of all others. She resumes her Spectre status and takes the _Normandy_ (as if it's hers and no one feels the need to correct her) and she flies from relay to relay to aid in the reconstruction and keep the peace.

-*-*-*-*-

It's ten years after the Reaper war when he suffers a heart attack. They are sitting outside of the hospital watching the people go by on the rebuilt Citadel. They've seen each other, of course, on and off during the past decade but he is surprised by the change in her - perhaps only able to recognize it now that time has slowed down again. He has a new heart ticking inside of him. At best, half of his life is gone already. At worst, he's already wasted enough time. He doesn’t know what he wants to rush toward on this downhill slope of his life, but he knows that it is something different. Some of his equals have grand-kids bouncing on their knees. He wonders if she ever considered being a mother, or even if she can. He knows of her nightmares of the child and that she still has them, though not as frequently. Would a child of her own silence them or make them even greater?

“Miller’s doing a damn fine job as my replacement,” he says in way of conversation.

“Yeah,” she says breathily. “You better watch yourself.”

“You know, I checked and between the two of us we have several years of vacation owed to us.”

“Is that right?”

“Yeah.” He stops. “We could visit your mother and find out what’s left of my family in Buenos Aires.”

“That sounds like a dream.” She didn’t say it in a good way.

“Jane, you deserve what all these people have. Ten times over. We both do.”

“You get what you get,” she said, quoting Jack. “Deserves got nothing to do with it.”

He sighed. “You’re a strong woman, Jane. I’ve never tried to take that away from you. I’ve never tried to be anything more than a partner, an equal, faithfully disregarding age and rank in favor of what I knew of you and what you were capable of.”

She turns to look at him, lifts an eyebrow in a silent: _'and?'_.

He almost decides not to continue. It's a shot in the dark. She's much younger than him, yet her eyes, the set of her jaw, the slump in her shoulders - they betray the toll that life has taken on her. “And," he says, going for broke not able to believe that he doesn't know her as well as he does. "I’ve been racking my brains out trying to figure out why that formula doesn’t seem to be working anymore.”

“You come up with anything?” Her eyes were forward, watching the people walk in front of them.

“Yes, I have.”

She turned to look at him with that. She had a look in her eyes that was not foreign to him. It was the same look she had given him years ago when he had held her and kissed her for the first time in that hallway outside of her apartment. It was a look of entreaty.

“It’s common knowledge that war time strategies don’t translate during times of peace. The same general that leads an army into a victorious battle, is usually not the same general that's cut out to lead a successful rebuild.”

“You seem to be doing okay.”

“We’re exceptions to the rule, you and I. But I’m not talking about war or politics. I’m talking about me and you.”

“So, what’s your new strategy?”

“I think I’m going to have to play the older card,” he says, taking her hand in his. “And tell you that from where I’m sitting, I know what’s best for you. And maybe even know what you want, even if you can’t even put it into words.”

“Well then,” she answers playfully, but there was a seriousness that lied just underneath. “Enlighten me, please.”

“You want someone to take care of you,” he says, and he can almost see his words washing over her like caresses. “You want to relinquish control.” She shuts her eyes as if imagining his words coming to life. “You don’t want to hold even the simplest of decisions on your shoulders for awhile.” He leans toward her so that his mouth was at her ear and his words came out as warm breath against her face. “More specifically, you want to be my wife. You want me to whisk you away from it all, to make love to you every evening and wake up in your arms every day.”

“That is very sage-like and convincing,” she whispers. He draws back as she turns to look at him. “But if you think I’m going to marry you without having you ask me properly, you’re quite mistaken.”

“Fair enough, but I’m afraid if you’re expecting the bended knee, you may have to wait a while yet.”

“Oh, I want the bended knee,” she says. “I want the words, the ring, the doe-eyed look of anticipation in your eyes while I make you wait for my answer.”

He chuckles and rubs his hand against the back of his neck. “I may have miscalculated this strategy, just a bit.”

“Don’t worry, old man. I’m just trying to keep you on your toes.” She kisses him on the cheek. “But in deference to your delicate condition, just between you and I..." She leans towards him, her breath warm against the shell of his ear, "I’m pretty sure I’m a sure bet.”

-*-*-*-*-

She takes to domestic life like she has taken to everything else thrown at her. Their little house is run efficiently. She washes and he dries. She finds new recipes and he cooks them for her.

Fresh laundry is piled on their bed between them one day when she asks, “Do you want children?”

His hands stall briefly in their task, but he continues, answering honestly, “I didn’t know if you could.”

She shrugs, looking down at the pile of clothing. “I don’t know if I can, either. But that’s not an answer.”

“I would like to try.”

She looks up to him and smiles, a happy innocent smile that he can't recall seeing on her face in years. Folding one of his shirts and setting it on the bed, she says, “I would to.”

-*-*-*-*-

He kisses the mark on her arm that had been her IUD.

-*-*-*-*-

“I don’t know if I can try again.”

He nods, pulling her against him and wrapping his arm around her. “We could always adopt.”

She nods in return. There was so many in need, adoption seemed more practical than having a baby anyway. But it wasn’t the same. She had already saved the universe three times over. Everyone, in some odd way, owed their lives to her and were somehow _hers_. She wanted a reward for her efforts, something innocent and clean of all that had come before it. Something that was of him and her - their essence. Was that selfish? She didn’t know. She normally didn’t have a selfish bone in her body, but she wanted this. And when she wanted something...

-*-*-*-*-

She didn’t tell him the next time. She thought it might be easier to go through it alone. She didn’t know if she could stand the look in his eyes when the inevitable disappointment might fall down upon them. She made it passed the ten week mark. That was the point she had miscarried before. She had intended to wait until 12 weeks, the ‘safe’ point, but she couldn’t wait any longer. Leaving the doctor's office, practically skipping down the street to where her air car was parked, she had never felt more excited and happy. When the explosion hit her it was surreal and as her body slammed against the concrete wall, bones cracking on impact she recalled quite clearly Jack’s words again: _You get what you get. Deserves got nothing to do with it._

-*-*-*-*-

“We can try again.”

As she nods, tears streaming down the sides of her face to land in her ears and spiral down into her ear canals, she knows that they both know that she would not.

-*-*-*-*-

She got a shot, not wanting the permanence of the IUD. She could never be accused of being a quitter and this way seemed less like quitting and more like calling a temporary truce. Following the bombings, for the one she suffered was just one of many, she and Steven throw themselves into the business of aiding the Council in finding out who the culprits are and helping their neighborhood heal its wounds. The work helps alleviate the stress and reality of the situation. 

There was no time to think or talk about adoption. She spends her spare time helping at the hospital, tending to the wounded and contributing to morale. She grows especially close to a young girl, covered head to toe in burns, even going so far as to shave her head so that their hair could grow back together. 

She's striding hurriedly in her usual, purposeful gait through the halls of the hospital and toward the little girl's room. She has an insanely large stuffed animal tucked beneath her arm. It doesn't register at first, why Steven would be standing outside in the hallway sharing a conversation with a few doctors in hushed whispers. Why they all stop talking and look at her sharing the same pained expressions.

The stuffed animal falls to the ground. "No." She shakes her head as if that can make what is truth no more. After all this time, she should know better than that. It's a damn shame that she doesn't.

Steven walks over to her. Holds her while she bangs her fists against his chest as if he is to blame. "I'm sorry," he whispers and for some reason, unknown and completely unfair, she hates him for it.

Hackett takes her away to a beach house and they spend a few months in quiet solitude. Nothing seems to be working, so he takes her on a trip. Visiting old friends on Tuchunka, Palaven, Thessia and others. By the time they are heading back to their house she is more exhausted than he has ever seen her. Worried about her state of health, he brings her to the hospital on the Citadel as soon as they return.

"She's severely dehydrated and malnourished."

Steven runs his fingers through his hair, turning to look at the door that he knows that she is lying behind. "She hasn't been eating well," he whispers. He feels a failure. As if he should've known. Done more. But she can be so damned evasive, convincing. In another life, it had been a strength.

"There's more."

He looks back to the doctor.

"Your wife is pregnant. Approximately four months judging by the size of the fetus." She stops and narrows her eyes at him. "Am I right to assume that you didn't know?"

There is a string of questions that Hackett answers in his stunned haze. He is told, miraculously, that the child is fine. The doctor tells him in way of explanation: “The body will do everything in its power to preserve the child, even at the expense of the mother.”

She is tired and in a constant state of recovery for the rest of her pregnancy. She is happy but it comes with strings attached. Strings of guilt for the shape she now finds herself in. Strings of remorse that their dreams came true a day late and a little girl short. He takes care of her and for the first time in her life, she lets herself be catered to and coddled without one single word of protest. The doctors are happy that she at least makes it to week thirty-six. 

She wants to name their daughter after the little burned girl and she apologizes to him one more time for not taking care of herself. “Is she alright?” She asks him, her voice dry and creaky as she looks over to him while he stands by her feet.

He looks at her, her face ashen and glistening with sweat, lips trembling and tears streaming down the sides of her face. “She’s beautiful.”

After. After one brief moment of perfection. Of the three of them together. Of him holding her hand and her holding their child. Of her telling him, "Thank you. Thank you for this." 

It doesn't last. Somehow they both knew that it wouldn't, it couldn't last. For them. Those that sacrifice - _everything_ \- for everyone else.

There's a lot of rushing around and shouting and blood. There was a lot of blood. 

She dies shortly after. There are several reasons. None of them make it any easier.

-*-*-*-*-

Steven Hackett stands in the hallway of the hospital, cradling his daughter in his arms.

“What are you going to do?” Karin Chakwas asks him, staring at him as if sizing him up. “As hard as you think it will be, it’ll be that much harder.”

He looks up at her. “You’re concern is duly noted. But I think we’ll be fine.”

It's harder than he could've ever imagined and he is flummoxed by the amount of mistakes and missteps that he makes. But like her mother, she is resilient and almost amused by her father’s ineptitude oftentimes making him look like the naïve youngling and she the wise adviser. Just as her mother before her. 

He gives her Jane’s old omnitool and she wears it around the house and sleeps with it. She watches some distorted recordings. She starts leaving messages on it. “Can you hear me?” “Why did you leave me?” Escalating further to, “Everyone seems to know you and yet I can’t. I feel cheated.” “Dad tried to talk to me about liking boys today. I think he misses you more than I ever could’ve guessed. I wonder what you would’ve told me. I wonder if I would’ve told you that I like Jake Johnson.” Teary, angry, short messages of: “I hate him.” Followed up the next night with resigned, “Sometimes I think that he resents me. That he wishes he still had you instead of me. Or that he wants me to be just like you, but I don’t even know who you were. I’ll never be you.” The messages become further and further apart. The last one is short and there’s no mention that she intends it to be a farewell. “Today’s your birthday. We happened to be on the Citadel so we swung by your memorial. I pretended not to notice the tears in Dad’s eyes and I guess he did the same for me. I guess we turned out okay without you. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that Jake proposed to me. I don’t know how I’ll ever leave him all alone.”

-*-*-*-*-

Melanie Hackett-Johnson stepped into her father’s cottage and called out to him, “Hey, old man. We’re here.”

Two children skirt passed their parents, absorbed in some child's game of chase. The young family makes it a point to visit him at least once a month. This trip came at an awfully inconvenient time but she never fails to make it a priority. When he doesn't answer her right away, she shrugs it off. His hearing has become worse and worse as the years go by. She swings by the kitchen and places a carton of milk from the counter back into the refrigerator, thinking that he'll have to be moving in with them sooner rather than later.

“Dad?”

When she turns the knob to his bedroom, she already knows. He is dressed as he always is, casual yet pressed and tidy. He lay on the made bed, his arms crossed at his chest and something resting beneath them. She walks closer and with a scan of her omnitool confirms what she had already known.

She takes from his hands, already cold, something familiar. It's her mother’s old omnitool. The one she used to talk into when she was little. 

She thumbs it on. “Hello, Mel,” her father’s voice floods the room as if from the grave. “I’ve been listening to this these past few nights, I hope you don’t mind." She sits down next to him, cradling the omnitool in her hands. "When I listened to you talking to your mother, it made me feel closer to her. And in the past few days, I could almost feel her sitting next to me.” Melanie, military daughter that she is, raised by an Admiral and child of Commander Shepard, bites back her tears. “I think it’s time for me to go back to her now. I’ve done my job and then some, just as she had. And if I know her like I think I do, she won’t rest until I’m there to tell her to do so. I think we both need our orders to stand down. You made me proud. Every day of your life. And your mother and I love you, don’t ever forget that.” There was a silence and from what she could hear it sounded like he was sitting on the bed and lying down. And then there are his final words. Only two. She knows from vids and friendly stories around dinner tables the significance of them, of course. Her mother had heard them frequently.

But it was a first for her. Her first. And her last. 

“Hackett out.”


End file.
